


yet turning stay

by irnan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 10:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tony - you're all I've got too, you know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	yet turning stay

Gin's mother died when she was eighteen; it was a car crash. Tony has known her eight years before he becomes aware that this is a thing they have in common. Pepper knew him eight weeks before she realised why she understood him so well.

 

 

She never knows her father. Well, that's not quite true, she meets him once - after her mother's funeral - he shuffled his feet and looked guilty and said, _you should come_ \- and was interrupted by her half-sister, calling from inside the house in a high, childish voice. And to be fair, which Gin does generally try to be, he always sent money, when and where he could. He's just never done anything else

"I won't keep you," she said to him, over the call of _Daddy, Daddy_. "I just thought you should know she's gone, it could have taken you decades to realise it."

Gin Potts spent high school being a clever, arty kid with a head for numbers and organisational talent. The verbal bitchslap is her favourite form of self-defence, although on this occasion it comes issued with a slightly wobbly voice and a grimace that in no way resembles her usual smile.

 

 

She lets Tony call her Pepper because she likes it better than Virginia, and because she likes Miss Potts the PA better than Gin the student, or the trainee, or the youngest employee, or the intern, or the (not)orphan.

And, look: she's not just good at her job, she loves it. Pepper has a predilection for bossing people about and (as mentioned) a talent for organising things; she's uncommonly fond of hard work, not for all the reasons most people think - sure, she has issues, and sure, she's damaged in her own special ways, but she's not trying to run away from that by hiding in her job. Very much the opposite: the knowledge that she is good at her job, that people like her and respect her for being good at her job, fixes something in her she didn't realise was broken - it gives her self-confidence, it lets her smile again and mean it. College wafted by, undemanding, in a haze of grief and loneliness, but Pepper's job anchors her.

 

 

Apart from anything else she's always liked being needed and Tony -

 

 

Contrary to popular belief, Tony doesn't flirt with her. He teases and he runs his mouth off but he doesn't flirt with her.

At least, not until they've known each other for long enough that she begins to flirt back.

 

 

The thing about Tony is: he loves a challenge. Most of the time he makes them up himself, and then they're generally really stupid challenges like 'how do I surpass myself at pissing everyone off even more comprehensively than last time?", but sometimes one comes up from outside his protective shell, and then he gets a glint in his eye and a hard, concentrated look on his face, and within a week he's either won, built something better, or slept with his challenger, and sometimes all three.

Pepper loves that look. Tony is never as alive, never as _present_ , as he is in those moments.

 

 

The other thing about Tony is: no one else can make Pepper as angry as he can.

 

 

Gin's first long-term boyfriend turned out to be a douchebag, and the second one was a wimp.

OK, that was harsh. But she knows she's done with him when they're having a lazy Sunday afternoon and the phone rings and she answers it with "Pepper," and he says (snidely, resentfully), "I thought your name was Virginia?"

She doesn't think it's jealousy of Tony so much as anger that she even has a job that takes her out of the house; it's like Ben wants a girlfriend who's at home waiting for him every evening, but doesn't know how to admit that to himself, let alone his partner.

 

 

Or maybe it _was_ jealousy of Tony.

 

 

Anyway, after Ben, she's very firm about not really wanting anything 'real' or 'deep' from the guys she goes out with. Pepper was upset when they broke up - well, when she broke up with him - because Ben was nice, and kind, and he'd always made her laugh, but she will eat a bullet before she spends another week at work being distracted and off-kilter over a guy.

Pepper loves her job far too much for that. Pepper is too good at her job for that. And finally, Pepper has too much pride for that.

 

 

The only person she is ever dependent on after her mother dies is herself.

(This does not mean that she doesn't come to need Tony so much it hurts her to think about it.)

 

 

She bought the blue dress for herself and for no other reason - certainly not because Tony was missing-presumed-dead-by-now and would have liked it and she might actually kill to see his face right now but she probably never will again and she has no right to him – to anything of his – so the dress - the dress will have to - it won't do, it _won't_ , but she hasn't really got anything else: she'll buy the dress, and picture the smile he'd wear to see her in it, and try her damndest not to cry.

 

 

Yet Tony comes back, and he comes back challenged, and Pepper has never seen anything so lovely in her life.

 

 

Of course, being Tony, he wrecks that within the year. The whole palladium poisoning thing is _no_ excuse, just _not_ , he's going to have to do more than be an amazing kisser to sort this out.

(Being Tony, he takes that as a challenge, and - being Tony - goes for the all-three-options ending. Not to put too fine a point on it, Pepper Potts is now officially abusing her position as CEO of Stark Industries by sleeping with one of her employees. The employee in question finds this hilarious. So, though she'd never admit it out loud, does Pepper.)

 

 

Disconcertingly, Pepper finds that even without the suit, Tony is more than strong enough to physically lift her up and carry her around if she gives him permission (like last Tuesday when they were stumbling across the ruined house clumsy as a pair of horny teenagers and he growled _fuck this_ into her mouth and his fingers pressed firmly into the soft skin of her upper thighs and just _lifted_ , which, _wow_ ). Pepper hasn't usually thought of Tony as strong per se - resilient, my God yes, but resilient the way, oh, rubber or something is resilient, bendable, stretching and bouncing back, which has nothing to do with physical strength.

To think she'd believed she knew everything about him.

 

 

First time they had a screaming match in the workshop (a proper one, not a trace of playfulness left) Tony threw a screwdriver at the wall and said furiously, "I knew I was right about the stable-ish," and Pepper threw the proposal from the DoD they'd been arguing over onto the floor at his feet so the file skidded across the concrete and spilled paper printouts everywhere and said, "Oh for god's sake, Stark, when are you ever right about anything?" and then, much, much later, she says ruefully, "I guess it's symptomatic that our first kiss happened in the middle of an argument," and Tony turns his face into her stomach, beard scraping against her skin, and laughs.

 

 

Every now and then - important birthdays, Christmas - Pepper's father tries to contact her. Sudden-onset guilt, brought about by news of former lover's funeral, resurfaces periodically over several decades. Sometimes he gets through, and they talk for maybe three minutes before hanging up, and then Pepper likes to go into her living room and throw her cushions at things - preferably nothing breakable, but she'll take what she can get. Anyway, unfortunately, the first Christmas she spends with Tony is one of those times the old man gets through. Tony's house is still being renovated after his... his exploits earlier in the year, and Jarvis has taken to snarking at the workmen and resentfully playing the saddest Christmas songs he can find whenever Tony's over there - or at least, that's what Tony says - so they're in her apartment, and Pepper is raiding her freezer for more ice cubes when the phone rings.

"Potts residence, the butler speaking," says Tony when he picks up. Pepper laughs, because she gets to do that now: show the world how much she likes to listen to him.

There's a pause, and Tony says sharply, " _Who_? I'm Tony Stark. Is this a - no, she's _my_ boss. Back to my initial question -"

"Tony, who is it?"

He's standing in front of the sofa, glass in one hand, phone cradled against his ear, and he's wearing the look, the serious look. "Pepper, d'you have a father?"

She flinches, she can feel herself flinch, and Tony sees it, and goddammit, if that asshole has ruined their Christmas...

"She can't talk right now," says Tony into the phone. "No, of course not. I'll pass that along. Goodbye."

He hangs up. Then he unplugs the phone. Then he crosses the room, fishes her cell out of her bag, and turns that off.

"You OK?"

"I met him once," she says steadily. "Twenty years ago. After my mother died. He rings up every now and then, I think just to find out if I'm still alive. He never asks to meet or anything, just... calls."

Tony sighs. "Pepper..."

Pepper shakes her head, and he goes to her then and puts his arms around her, and they stand like that for a long time, and it's OK - it's OK, she doesn't need to throw cushions anymore, because Tony's right here and doesn't just love her: he understands her, like she's always, always understood him.

 

 

She stays in touch with both Natasha and Agent Coulson, and doesn't even need to do it secretly because Tony never notices that sort of thing anyway.

 

 

Pepper meets Maria Hill in the hospital where they stash Tony after he falls through a wormhole into another galaxy seconds ahead of the blast wave from a nuclear bomb. The other woman's snapping orders into her earpiece and clutching a cup of dreadful coffee like it's a lifeline and she could probably do with seeing a doctor herself.

"Agent Hill," says Pepper, stepping in front of her.

Hill's eyes narrow.

"Pepper Potts, CEO Stark Industries. Agent, is there anything I can do?"

Hill pauses: assessing, taking her time. Then, sharply, she grins. "Let me get you the list."

 

 

All her life Pepper has liked, wherever possible, to sleep in the dark. It took her a good few months to get used to the glow of Tony's arc reactor. She knows it took him just as long. And in the aftermath of New York, of his stupid self-sacrificing suicidal stunt with a _nuclear bomb_ , she has never seen anything as lovely as that unwavering blue light painting (his face) (her own skin) (lighting his eyes) (lighting her face, her face he loves to watch when they make love) the walls and ceiling of their bedroom.

 

 

"When I was eight," Pepper says, "I was going to time-travel to the forties and marry Captain America."

Steve bursts out laughing; Tony grins, wide and slow and wicked.

"When _I_ was eight," he says, "I was going to time-travel to the forties and marry Captain America."

"When I was eight," says Steve, suddenly solemn, "I was going to time-travel to the future and bring my Mam back a cure for TB."

Pepper reaches across the table to take his hands in hers and holds on tight; Tony's hand grips Steve's shoulder. Fathers they don't do, either of them, but mothers, mothers...

 

 

( _Better by far that you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad_. That's Rosetti. Pepper tried to read it at the funeral, but the tears choked her throat - she no longer recalls if she made it all the way through the poem or not.)

 

 

"Romanov," she asks one day, "or Romanova?"

Natasha shrugs. "It doesn't matter."

"How doesn't it matter? It's your name."

"Is it, Virginia?"

"Oh!" exclaims Pepper, impatient, and moves a hand in the air between them as if to wipe the sound away. Natasha laughs though, easily if not for long.

"It made a difference in Russia," she says. "But I'm not Russian anymore."

It made a difference to Virginia when she was a child, a half-abandoned adolescent, a grieving orphan. But Pepper is none of those things anymore.

 

 

Jim Rhodes has been known to drink a few over the limit on occasion, usually at the urging of one Tony Stark, but right now he's had his hand clamped around that same bottle of beer for nearly three hours. Pepper can tell: the labels are flaking off.

"Rhodey," she says, half-reproving, half-worried.

"Pepper," he says. "You guys are off your heads. I said it when you built this Tower but that was the sort of thing you say when you're confronted with unexpected genius. This is something else."

"You're not making the slightest bit of sense," says Pepper.

Jim looks at her, and there is something wild and something horrified and something little-boy delighted in his eyes. "I have just spent an hour talking military tactics with _Captain America_ ," he says, hushed and hallowed with awe. "How is this your life?"

"Well," says Pepper, ruefully, and glances at the man in question: Steve is by the window, leaning towards Tony; they're talking in low voices, trying not to laugh at - Clint, probably. "Tony, you know."

Rhodey makes a noise that a less charitable person might call a moan of pure, unadulterated jealousy.

 

 

And she's sitting in a restaurant one evening, waiting for Tony and aware he likely won't show - it's all right, she has a book with her and it's actually sort of nice to settle in and have someone else fetch her wine while she does nothing - when a young woman in a black pantsuit sits down opposite her.

Pepper looks up from her Sarah Waters and fixes the girl with an expression that has silenced whole roomfuls of superheroes. "I don't give interviews or statements during my dinner hour, Miss...?"

"What?" says the girl, and then goes bright red. It's not a good look on her, she's pale already - now she looks sunburned. Pepper would sympathise if she hadn't just been so rudely interrupted. "No, no, I'm - it's Sarah."

Pepper raises an eyebrow.

"Sarah Greene?" the kid tries again.

Still nothing. Pepper can list three different Greenes, a Greenwood and a Greendale working at Stark Industries. Two of them are women and three of them have colouring that would match this girl's.

"Your _sister_ ," she says, desperate.

Oh.

Oh, Pepper forgot that was his name too.

"Oh," she says blankly. He did say, once, that her sister's name was Sarah.

Sarah is mortified. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I am - I just - this was a bad idea, I shouldn't have -"

"No," says Pepper. "No, sit down - may we have another glass of the Epesses each, thank you - you are over twenty-one, aren't you?"

Sarah snorts. "Yes. Yes, I am. I'm sorry. I just - I wanted to meet you. My Mom knew, but they only just told me, and I just - I was so mad at him. I mean, all this time, and he's treated you like crap and Mom let him, and so I kind of packed up and -"

Pepper is getting a headache already. "You haven't run away, have you?"

"No! I mean, I have an apartment anyway. I'm at Colombia. It's technically still break, but - but I came back earlier than I had to."

One PR disaster mostly avoided. Pepper knows she shouldn't be looking at this with her detached, professional glasses on, it's not fair to the kid, but really. If Sarah wanted fair, she should have called ahead.

Impulsive, brave, overactive sense of right and wrong. Oh dear. Pepper has a history of becoming deeply fond of people like that.

"Well," she says. "It's nice to meet you, after all this time."

She's surprised to find she means it. Pepper knows herself well enough to be able to privately admit that if Sarah _had_ called ahead Pepper would most likely have found an excuse not to meet with her. Being faced with the reality of the girl, flushed, awkward, brave, makes her ashamed of that.

Sarah looks relieved. "Likewise," she says happily. "I - it's a little ridiculous, I've admired you for ages, Pepper Potts, you know. And now you're my sister."

Oh wow, this is what it's like for Steve.

"Did you know about me?"

Pepper shrugs. "I knew there was another kid," she says bluntly, feeling San Francisco creep back into her voice, the more relaxed tones of her childhood. "But I hope you'll forgive me and understand when I say I wasn't particularly interested. I could never work out why he replaced my Mom, let alone me."

Sarah goes red all over again. Pepper sighs. She knows she has a way of reacting too harshly when she's been hurt, but unlike Tony poor Sarah doesn't know her and won't forgive her for it. "Look," she says. "I am glad to meet you. I _am_. I can't imagine how much guts it took for you to come here and sit down with me. I admire that - guts - I always have. But you need to understand right now that you're not going to catch me forgiving him, or asking to meet with him, or even just asking how he is. I did care then; I don't now, and I'm never going to start. There is far too much else going on in my life. I have a company to run, and various superheroes to babysit, and a Tony to just generally keep in check. I don't have the time for him, let alone the inclination."

"I - I understand - I do. I'm really sorry -"

"You've said that three times already," says Pepper gently. "Have a meal with me. Tell me about Colombia. Tell me about your friends and your boyfriend or girlfriend or your hobbies or your blog or whatever. And after dessert you can decide if you want to see me again, and if so we'll make a date. I just need you to understand from the start how utterly uninterested I am in our father. Anything else is fair game."

Sarah nods slowly. "I... yeah. OK. I can - I'd like that. I do understand. Oh, what's that you're reading?"

They talk about books; they talk about college in general and law school in particular. Sarah is an engaging, cheerful, interesting conversationalist; Pepper thinks she sees in the other woman some of her own tact, friendliness, ability to draw people out.

(Disturbing thought, did she get those things from him?)

Pepper admits to her shoe collection; Sarah shamefacedly confesses a DVD collection that's nearly on a par with Tony's. "Entertainment industry, copyright law," she says, "these things are changing so amazingly fast, and people can't keep up - well, the people who sit in the institutions can't keep up, they don't understand the mindset and the attitudes of their customers anymore. Sometimes the customers don't understand it themselves. And the studios and the big business companies - music, publishing, everything - they need people who are adaptable. Even more, they need _policies_ that are adaptable."

Maybe Stark Industries should be casting an eye on the entertainment industry. They sponsor festivals and prizegivings, but apart from Tony's only half-serious dream to one day own an old-fashioned cinema, red curtains and all, that's about it...

They eat chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert, and laugh about Sarah's roommate's inability to wash a dish. Once or twice Pepper mentions her own work, sees repressed curiosity flicker in Sarah's eyes. Whether it's for the company or Tony is impossible to tell but Pepper, unthinking, steers the conversation away again - she is so very practised at protecting them both. And then it's coffee time, and nearly half-eleven, and time to leave.

"Your date never showed," Sarah says suddenly.

Pepper laughs. "Tony forgets two out of five of all the appointments we make and is inevitably hours late to the third."

Sarah smiles. "And the fourth and fifth?"

Pepper quirks an eyebrow, fighting back a temptation to tell the truth and say _mindblowing_ , just to see her sister's reaction. "Where d'you live?" she asks instead. "Let me drop you in the car."

"Oh..." Sarah bites her lip.

"Limo. Really comfortable amazing limo."

"Fine!" she laughs. "OK. Thank you so much. For dinner, and - and just for not calling security or... or not wanting anything to do with me."

She's a good kid. If Pepper were anyone but Pepper, it would make her want to hug her. As it is she's still just that bit too wary.

"Dinner again?" she asks when they pull up in front of Sarah's building.

"I'd like that," says her sister promptly.

So would Pepper.

 

 

"You have a sister?" says Tony, staring.

"She's adorable," says Pepper, perching on his workbench with her shoes dangling off her toes. "Like a sleek little puppy. Like Lady from _Lady and the Tramp_."

Tony's mouth curves as he looks at her. "Did you want a puppy, Potts? I can get you a puppy."

"Don't be ridiculous, it'd starve to death around here," says Pepper.

"True enough."

They kiss, and Tony's greasy hands paint black smudges on her skirt. Pepper's mental ever-scrolling list of Things I Still Have Not Done stutters to a halt at the touch of the man who's the reason most of the items are Not Yet Done in the first place, and she curves her body towards his, thinking _this makes up for it_ , which it does, in ways innumerable.

 

 

Pepper Potts runs Stark Industries with terrifying efficiency, except on those mornings (maybe once a month) when she and Tony don't make it out of bed till ten; she has a pack of superheroes living in her Tower and various SHIELD agents drifting in and out at all hours of the day and night; whenever she has sex with her - with the man she - with Tony she has to ask an AI not to record it; her frequent business meetings with Agent Hill become coffee with Maria; the toaster never works but the coffee maker always does; Tony's new PA, while not much more organised than Tony himself, is ruthlessly good at charming people in spite of themselves, sifting out the interesting from the unimportant and just generally keeping her head in a crisis; Pepper has a standing dinner date with her sister once a month, and Natasha Romanov is teaching her to spar.

 

 

The next time she's in California she goes the long way round and visits her mother's grave. It has become scruffy; Pepper is not fond of coming here. She stands in silence for a while, but the words don't come - they never have - so that eventually she leaves again without having done anything other than gazed at the headstone. Pepper doesn't understand people who talk to their dead loved ones. She thinks this is because she can't imagine her mother hanging around to listen. Anna was blunt, pragmatic, practical and organised; it wasn't in her nature to loiter or to put things off when she was alive, and Pepper sees no reason why that should have changed once she died.

Anna had Pepper when she was seventeen. Pepper doesn't know if she loved the man whose child she bore, if she was disappointed or hurt when he left, if she ever gave him a second thought except when the money arrived.

She did know, once, or thinks she did, but that was twenty years ago. The memory of her mother's face has become blurred as a softly-lit movie scene, all warmth and indefinite lines. Tony remembers his mother in the same way; so too does Steve.

Forget, and smile.

When she comes to the gates she finds Tony waiting for her, the ridiculous fool, wearing the armour too.

Instantly the drab little parking lot becomes the safest place in the world.

"Need a lift, Potts?"

Pepper rolls her eyes, but she doesn't say no.


End file.
